Tuesday, December 8, 2009

A while ago I put forth a few arguments in favor of flat-file Content Management Systems for simpler sites. A CMS like Wordpress is too complicated for someone who just want to put up some HTML pages together that requires only a few edits at a time.

PageLime is a hosted, remote Content Management System that allows any website owner to edit, manage images and documents on their site without installing any software. The best part is that it doesn't matter where your site is hosted, and whether you use PHP, Java, or ASP, or no scripting, and you don't have to make a single change to your site architecture.

All you have to do is allow PageLime access to your site’s servers and mark up the areas of your pages you want to edit using CSS classes. PageLime will retrieve your site and present it in an WYSIWYG editor, complete with an image editor. Once you're done with your edits, PageLime publishes the changes to your site using FTP. PageLime published flat files, and does not store or overwrite your source code. PageLime can also be configured to publish your content as XML.

Watch the following video to get a better understanding of the service.

The free account of PageLime is limited to editing 3 sites. Premium plans start from $19/month and comes with a host of features.